Confessions of a foodholic!

Category Archives: Fruit- Orange

I had thought I would start this blog with my very popular Mango Cheesecake recipe. I have made it several times with different varieties of mangoes and with great success. Moreover the pictures are absolutely droolicious and I thought it would be an apt beginning to my blogging experience.

However, yesterday was Praveen’s star birthday and I got a request from him yesterday morning for a cake. I hadn’t baked much since coming to Pune, and when I got that request, I couldn’t help but fulfill it.

Then started my research on the cake that I could possibly make for him. He doesn’t like chocolate too much and prefers fruit in his cakes. As I was going through my favorite blogs for some inspiration, I came across this, Suma’s absolutely wonderful blog and this yummy looking recipe. I had some oranges that were begging for attention and loads of yoghurt waiting to be consumed. I said, why not! But, look, it needs an egg as well.

Now I am not fond of eggs and don’t consume them in any form unless there are in cakes and bakes. I try to avoid using eggs as much as possible, and since my in-laws and Praveen’s extended family are pure vegetarians, sometimes it becomes a compulsion to make everything eggless. Moreover, I didn’t have eggs in stock yesterday.

So I decided to make it eggless. And it turned out absolutely yum, egg or no egg.

What do you think? Isnt it drool-worthy?

Here is the recipe the way I tweaked it. I have mentioned how it is different from the original in brackets

Ingredients:

Makes an 8 inch round cake.

Unsalted butter, softened, for pan

1 cup all-purpose flour, sifted

1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp powdered sugar(I decreased by 3/4 of a spoon since I increased the orange juice a bit)

1 tbsp icing sugar (for dusting the cake) (optional)

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/8 teaspoon baking soda (I added 1/2 tsp since I didnt use egg)

Pinch of salt

1/2 cup plain whole-milk yogurt

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 teaspoon grated orange zest, plus 1 tablespoon orange juice

1 large egg (instead i took 1 tbsp orange juice in a 1/4 cup measuring bowl and topped the rest of the bowl with yogurt, i.e. 1/4 cup yogurt-orange juice mix)

1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

2 large oranges (1 zested into thin strips, both segmented) (I needed to use only one large orange for the zest as well as the juice. another one was used to zest into thin strips. )

Directions

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius(350 F). Butter an 8-inch round cake pan. Sift flour, 1/2 cup plus 1 and quarter tbsp sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt. Whisk together yogurt, oil, orange zest and juice, and vanilla in a bowl. Fold in the flour mixture into the wet mixture. Pour into pan. Bake until a cake tester comes out clean, mine was done in 20-22 minutes. Let the top brown a bit (a light brown). Let cool on a wire rack. Dust one tbsp sugar on top of the cake(optional)

The cake doesn’t need any frosting or dusting. But I went ahead and made some glaze, which wasnt necessary. Although it gave a fresh flavor to the cake, it made it a lot more sweeter than I had intended it to be. If you would like to make the glaze, reducing the sugar in the cake batter by another 2 tbsp will correct the sweetness I think.